How to Edit Your Podcast Like a Pro

Podcasters, you’re in for a treat! Today, we have several top podcasters weighing in about a task that can be both time-consuming and frustrating: editing! The below advice comes from some of our NMX 2014 speakers who will be sharing their knowledge in the Podcasting Track and other NMX tracks.

Here are their best tips for editing your podcast:

“Hire a editor! I used to waste 4 or more hours editing my show each week, because I was such a perfectionist. Now, I send it to an editor. It’s very inexpensive and you are much better off using that time to promote your podcast, schedule influential interviews, or plan future podcasts that will draw massive traffic. There are many places you can hire an editor, but you can start by checking out elance.com” – Jeremy Frandsen, Internet Business Mastery

“Cut all the rambling and set up at the start of the podcast that you say when the microphone goes live. Start then from where you get into the meat of your topic. Think about radio shows and TV shows. They get into the plot or story from the start. We tend to share too much about ourselves, notices and off topic content before we start. Move that to the end. Even better, write a tight introduction or record it after you done the show.” – Gary Bembridge, Tips for Travellers and Marketing Mix Man

“I record the podcast episode or video clip, dump it into Dropbox in all it’s raw, un-cut glory, and my VA’s handle the rest for me. They even upload the podcasts to my server, and the video clips to my YouTube channel, including a description, keywords, etc.” – Chris Ducker, ChrisDucker.com

“Adobe Audition is my best friend on editing days. You can assign hot keys, and my favorite hot key to assign is the marker. It allows me to press ‘m’ during the interview when I say something stupid, and go back and edit it out. I don’t have to listen to the WHOLE interview to find that one spot..I just go to the marker, edit, and move to the next one.” – John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire

“When editing audio for your podcast, such as an interview, if the speaker repeats a word or stumbles over a phrase it’s often better to make edits in the middle of a word than it is to edit from the start or end of a sentence. Here’s a video showing exactly what I mean and how to put my tip into practice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNPclgelLB4” – Mike Russell, Music Radio Creative

“My best editing tip for a podcaster or blogger is to cultivate and listen to an inner circle of “super fans” that consume all of your content as soon as you put it out and will “quickly” tell you if there is a type-o, glitch or shortcoming in your content so you can fix it. Unlike those that just like to find fault, these fans are easy on your ego, and seek to make you better. It is like having your mother review your blog or podcast. That is the kind of “love” you get when you identify your niche. One of the benefits of identifying your niche is that you can grow this garden of super fans that help you succeed.” – Rev. Kenn Blanchard, Blanchard Media Group and Black Man with a Gun

“As far as editing goes, if you can help it, don’t. If you must, don’t spend too much time on it and definitely don’t break up the rhythm of the conversation or your natural speaking voice.” – Erik Fisher, Beyond the To-Do List

“Best audio editing tip is if you make a mistake, pause 10 seconds and then continue. This makes it super easy to spot in the recording and will decrease your editing time.

Also some software titles (I use Sony Sound forge) let you play the file at a faster speed. I have found I can listen at 1.78 (almost double speed) and still catch the subtle things that may need edited.” – Dave Jackson, School of Podcasting

“I’d say not to edit at all. Hearing your authentic voice even with the background noise and interruptions makes it more authentic. People will come to appreciate it.” – C.C. Chapman, CC-Chapman.com

Feedback

Allison, wow! Thank you for including me in that amazing line up of podcasters. What a great set of tips. I especially like the idea of outsourcing the audio editing job as it can be time consuming.

Since Izabela has joined me on our podcast I find that I spend less time editing. She helps me to be more conversational and the amount of time I spend editing is much less as Izabela won’t allow me to cut out any of (mostly my) mistakes!

Allison, what an amazing lineup of GREAT insights and advice on editing your podcast. Thank you so much for including me here – I’m honored to be amongst the pros! This is a super resource for anyone who has a podcast, or who plans to launch one in the future. Thanks again!

I have found that a lot of podcasters don’t like to remove conversational words or sentences at the beginning of a paragraph. For example:

Interviewer: What’s the biggest thing that companies need to do when it comes to security?

Interviewee: Yes, well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate the question. You always ask great questions by the way. {Long Pause}. You know, this is something I spend a lot of my time thinking about in my day job. It is a really hard problem because it’s not going to be the same solution for each business.

You can see that there are several sentences at the beginning of this answer that are fluff, gratuitous, whatever you want to call them. If you leave too much of this type of thing in a podcast, the listener will get tired or frustrated listening to it and might even hit the stop button. There is no one correct way to edit this example, but consider the following and see if it is a bit cleaner. Everything to be removed is in CAPS.

Interviewer: What’s the biggest thing that companies need to do when it comes to security?

Interviewee: YES, WELL, thank you for having me on. I APPRECIATE THE QUESTION. YOU ALWAYS ASK GREAT QUESTIONS BY THE WAY. {LONG PAUSE}. You know, this is something I spend a lot of my time thinking about in my day job. It is a really hard problem because it’s not going to be the same solution for each business.

Again, this is just one possible edit of this section. You could leave a bit more IN, or you could take a little bit more OUT. My overall suggestion is to remove as much of the unnecessary banter as possible without making your podcast sound unnatural or robotic. Think of your listener and whether they really want to hear this type of fluff, then hit the cut/delete key. You will usually be better off.

What a great topic Allison! Kind of what Andy touched on…edit out long pauses, or if you had to repeat the question, cut the 2nd version. In addition, Skype can get weird sometimes with audio quality, or an interviewee on a cell phone cuts out right when their answering a really good question. Don’t hesitate to stop and let them know what happened. Ask the question again, or just have them repeat that part, and edit out the old so you have a nice clean sounding interview. Thanks for giving podcasters such a great learning space and sounding board. – Mary-Lynn, The BIGG Success Show

Yeah! There are some great tips here, and I must admit, I want to hug Gary! I have unsubscribed from more podcasts because the host spent 10 minutes at the outset giving me announcements and other stuff I was not interested in, before giving me what I WAS interested in. Maybe my attention span is too short, but I doubt it. I also love the diversity of opinions offered. There is certainly more than one way to handle editing.

Awesome post, thank you! There’s nothing worse, in my opinion, than a badly edited podcast. The ones where you can actually tell it has been edited. It loses a flow. The feeling changes from the question to the answer. Sometimes trying to stuff an hour into a half hour can really cause a show to go downhill.

It’s nice to see the different viewpoints from different podcast hosts. All of them are successful and are doing a damn good job delivering their content to their listeners around the world. Allison, I really enjoy reading this blog post to gather pertinent tips on how to enhance my skills as a host. So far, it’s been a fun journey and I look forward to what the future holds for utilizing this type of media to promote my brand.